Reality Check

[Lucifer]

@ I like Ike,

you can also try to play a few games with LL if you feel you need to learn more “depth” in AA50, even if you prefer ADS. My experience is that the best players are good players in both settings. In ADS you need more overkill, but LL setting is very efficient to see more clearly how the attacks and the odds are. Also LL can be good if you’re playing against yourself, this can be a learning tool for the first rnd only, and opening moves are very important in AA50.

[bugoo]

It really depends on what the allies are doing, if they are going for a hardcore KGF try to use Italian inf to play defensive and be sure to build fighters instead of bombers, they are better at killing boats and great on defense.  Keep your line of troops in Poland and Romania to grab your second NO and try to lure russia out early so you can get a decisive strike.  Conserve your forces.  Also, try to keep a few Italian armors in Germany or somewhere close where they can do a can opener to open up exposed russian armors, planes, or your 3rd German NO.  Getting a few Japanesse fighters into france can also be a huge help, as can a carrier in the med from Japan.  The Japanesse fighters can also potentially can opener for you.  Sacrifice the Italian fleet at a critical time to inflict looses on the UK’s boats.  Be sure to grab every IPC you can with Japan, if the US runs from the Pacific take away there island NO on turn 2.  Grab all the 1 IPC islands you can with Japan and push in southern Asia hard.  Remember, if Japan takes Caucaus for 1 turn that is 5 more IPCs for Germany, if they get into africa, well you get the point.  Do not let the allies take France!  Ever.

The biggest place where Germany gets in trouble is they push too hard against Russia, I’ve done it many times myself.  If allies are going KGF then gutting Russia is not your job, its Japans.  And honestly, they don’t have to walk as far (ICs in India, Indies, burma, etc, are closer than Germany really, weird)

[KindWinds]

Use the Italians to get up close to russia.  Make russia defend on 2 points.  Do your best to not lose German armor.  It puts tremendous pressure on russia.  I have been buying bombers as well seems to help me.  Russia will have more units than germany.  Also with Japan it is very important to sweep china out r1 and send as many as those fighters to get in range of hitting a weak spot in the russian lines as well.  If you get the chance just like in revised try to merge the fleets.  Anymore I like to skip the philippines  I know it sounds like crazy talk but come round three you should be sitting in chinghai with about 6-12 units that russia wont be able to deal with very well if you have the italians up on the front lines.  Just be careful.  I am in PA as well near Harrisburg =D.  I hope this helps a bit.  As an allied counter to this I have found that bombing italy with UK is quite the nag lol. Oh and with Germany buy some bombers they are pretty helpful as well try to make 1 per turn because with anywhere from 10-15 tanks and r3-5 you at some point should be able to take one weak point and bum rush russia with a lot of hardware.  I hope that kinda helps.  Also if you are playing a tech game it is very very very important to tech with both germany and japan r1.  The progression that I use is that I buy 1 token with germany r1 and then 2-3 on r2.  Hopefully germany gets something neat I hope to get mecha inf with japan LRA or Naval Yards or Jet power works for me.  Things however do not always go that good.

[Funcioneta]

Polar Express (Japanese campaign on mainland America by Alaska) will destroy hara-kiri (eeerrr… KGF) strat

Against a non-suicidal KJF strat:

Buy 10 inf,save 1 IPC as Germany 1st round. It’s the best purchase

Take advantage of chinese broken rules and setup and kill totally and utterly China J1

Dont’ ignore Pacific Ocean: be agressive against USA’s fleet, take all you can, negate their Pacific NO, etc.

Wait until your economic advantage beat allies by simple numbers

[Funcioneta]

@I:

(NOs, Dice and LL, No Tech).

LL? I’m even more surprised of axis losing. It negates any chances of China surviving J1, or something going really bad for axis round 1, in fact

[Corbeau Blanc]

I’ll help you with my eastern front basic strat ( I’m sure others came up with similar ones, it’s in most part a classic opening). You need an AC in Baltic to make this even more reliable but it’s not necessary, question of taste. Also, sink most of the Uk fleet but preserve ALL your planes.

Operation Barbarosa:

German Attack:

• Baltic States ( 3 infantry) – using Tranny:  3inf + 1art + 2 armor ( 1 casualty )
• East Poland ( 2 infantry) – 2inf + 1 art +2 armor ( 1 casualty )
• Ukraine ( 2 infantry)- 3inf + 1art + 2 armor ( 1 casualty )

This result in several things:
-      Solid frontline that deny any worthwile retaliation from Russia turn 1.

• Force Russians to reinforce Caucasus or lose it : Germany
          potential attack with 5 armor, 4 infantry, 1 art, 1 fighter, 1
          bomber -VS -  Russia 4 inf ( can be bolstered to up 10 inf, 1
          art, 1 tank* and 4 prod units )
  -       Force Russians to evacuate Karelia with German potential
          attack at 5 armor, 8 infantry, 1 art, 2 fighter, 1 bomber, 1 pot
          shot -VS- 5inf/1art ( bolstered to up to 9 inf, 1 art, 1 tank*
          and 2 prod units ) ATK odds being 95%  ( near undefendable )

The momentum achieved should enable you on turn 2 to swap Karelia, Belorussia and East Ukraine with minimal forces. Minimal forces means you don’t commit anything more than you need to swap ( use fighters ). That is true for Karelia unless sure you can 100% hold it ( Russia blundered ). Ukraine must hold before this consideration, use Italians and fighters to secure it from R2 retaliation.

From then, evaluate the situation in France and Africa, try to hold the eastern front using pressure and swapping, even ideally further denying retaking of territories. You should have quite a good IPC income, extending the life of your baltic fleet further more could be considered or not.

[bbrett3]

@ Corbeau Blanc

+1 for you!

tried it today and it worked beautifully, had the Ruskies tripping over themselves to cover Moscow and the Caucasus (they even abandoned Karelia  :-D)

Simple yet effective :wink:

[Omega]

I agree with Corbeau Blanc, although I prefer to concentrate all my tanks on East Poland. That leaves me option to attack both Karelia and Caucasse. Granted good Russian player will not abandon Caucasse, I’ll simply send everything I got G2 on Karelia. Transport can be used to efficiently bring 2 more infantry to the front (as long as your Baltic fleet stays alive) so you can concentrate on Tank/aircraft building.
In my limited testing, a first turn Aircraft Carrier can be a good move with Germany. You secure your fleet, and if UK spend all his money to destroy it, this should leave India/Africa unprotected.

About Africa, you need some coordination with your Italian Partner. See what his plans are. Usually, using the transport to bring 1 infantry + 1 tank:  2 infantry, art and Tank, and bring also your Bomber. Your chance of success depends on the rolls, but you will likely take Egypt with 1 tank and 1 bomber left (or so). Once Egypt is secured, the rest of Africa will be at your mercy. And Italian player can concentrate on Trans-Jordan, harassing Russian advances (Shore bombardment), securing German advance, securing France and securing Morocco. That’s a lot of job for tiny Italy, but good coordination from both Germany and Italy can allow Italy to be very effective

My G1 buying :
1 AC 14
4 Infantry 12
1 tank 31

Sometimes, Ukraine will fall because I didn’t send the tanks, but that’s when Italian player can help me out. He possibly has a tank or two with his transport and 1 fighter to push back the Russian player.

Try to sink the most of British ships you can. Taking down their Transports is key to an axis success

Robert

[Lucifer]

@I:

I’ve been playing on TripleA for about a month.  I have been playing almost exclusively with the Axis (NOs, Dice and LL, No Tech).

I didn’t notice the mention of LL at first, thought you were playing only dice games. In ADS, AA50 is not so ubalanced, with LL allies need 6-9 ipc bid probably, depending on the players experience levels. Maybe you’re giving the allies too high bid amounts??

With no bids and LL, NOs and no tech, there is very little allies can do to stop axis from winning, only very big mistakes, or ineffective strats from the axis player can help allies win in this setting.
Its also beneficial to play both sides, you will learn faster to play good with either side if you play both, if you play only one side then it takes more time to learn the game, and AA50 consists of both allies and axis  :wink:

[kevlar56]

Kudos to Omega (if I had a karma to give I would  :-)). :-) The more I play, the more imperative a Ger1 CV seems to become.  It is SO valuable in so many ways! Be sure that if the UK concentrates on Germany that you are taking full advantage of the weaknesses they WILL be leaving elsewhere across the board.  Remember, every IPC you take away from the UK is one less they can spend on attacking Ger. or defending the USSR.  I also agree that heavy inf buys with Ger. can assist, especially around turns 3-4.  Don’t forget to defend France and you should be okay.  IMO trading France with the Anglo-Allies is a mug’s game.
All the best,
Kevin

[fanofbond]

also from SW PA

[I like Ike]

@axis_roll:

Can you detail your standard G1 buy/combats?

Hmmm that’s a good question axis….I’ve tried a couple different tactics.  My standard opening move with the Luftwafta is to take out the UK navy leaving only the DD and Tranny in SZ9.  I’ve tried (and usually successfully) take Egypt with the help of the bomber, but I’ve abandoned that strat on G1 because using the bomber in Egypt instead of the UK fleet leaves to much of the UK fleet intact.  Now on to Russia.  In my first 5 games or so, on G1 and G2, I was buying armor almost exclusively.  I made strong pushes taking the normal countries and Karliea, but I didn’t have enough support troops to protect my armor .  Russia would stack up inf when they saw what I was doing, then counter with armor of their own going after my armor that was not properly protected.

So I started to realize that I was being over aggressive and went for a more balanced approach.  This has been my last 3 or 4 games.  I’ve been trying to buy a 2-1 Inf,Art/Armor ratio to maximize defense for my armor.  This seems like a better approach but I can’t seem get into Russia deep enough and fast enough to cripple their IPC production.  Then by round 4 or 5 the UK and US are putting so much pressure  on Italy or France that I have to start reallocating resources away from Russia.  Now Russia’s building offensive units and they start counter attacking.

I’m doing fine with Japan.  I put pressure on Moscow every game, but it’s always too little too late.

So that’s kinda where I’m at.  Hope this was enough info for ya.  thanks

[I like Ike]

Also, I wanted to thank everyone for being willing to help and offer up advice.  :-)  I’m doing good with Japan so that isn’t a problem for me.  It has been my inability to be effective with Germany/Italy that’s the problem…. :cry:

Thanks again everyone.

[Zhukov44]

I wonder about the bomber and Egypt….if you don’t use the bomber than Germany has poor odds in Egypt.  It seems to me this opens the door for either 1) USA is free to focus on Japan or 2) UK focuses completely on Europe, while USA reinforcements shore up Africa before Italy can build up.  Just in general the Middle/East seems to be a key region for Axis and allowing the Egypt forces to live means United Kingdom has way more optons there.

I can definitely understand using the bomber on the BB or in Karelia instead…  but Egypt seems so critical even if Axis gets owned in Africa 95% of the time.  At least you force the Allies to divert forces there.